


27 Proposals, or So, or Not

by travellinghopefully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Feels, Fluff and Angst, so many feels, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinghopefully/pseuds/travellinghopefully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor asks Clara to marry him - as only he can</p><p>this started out as humorous and was meant to be fluffy, and then went angsty, with lots of feels, so many feels</p><p>please read to the end though</p><p>not quite what I intended but....</p>
            </blockquote>





	27 Proposals, or So, or Not

He had held out his hand to her and said, 

“So, all of time and all of space is sitting out there. A big blue box. Please, don’t even argue.”

She had kissed him on the cheek and taken his hand, and they had run outside, but he wasn’t convinced she had really understood.

He decided on a plan, he would consult every culture, he would even ask Jack. He needed the perfect plan to get Clara to say yes.

Perhaps leaving out an actual heart was ill considered. When he reviewed the literature, that really wasn’t what giving someone your heart meant.

The Duar people in China dissect a chicken and inspect its liver before commencing on important things.

Clara barely glanced up from her book as the Doctor ran past with a cleaver in his hand. She only really paid attention when she realised she could hear distant squawking. She shot out of her seat and raced to the TARDIS kitchen.

"Put the chicken down Doctor." She was quite insistent

The Doctor stood there, a very irate chicken upside down in one hand, the cleaver in the other.

"Put the chicken down." Her face was doing the angry thing.

He put the chicken down.

The chicken raced off. They spent several hours finding, catching and releasing the terrified creature. Clara spent longer telling the Doctor off.

He read Federico Mercia’s book “I want you”, he took Clara to Rome. They did see the Ponte Milvo, and he did drop a padlock on the way past. It was probably immaterial that they were being chased at the time.

The Doctor tried to remember how well he spoke whale. In Fijian culture it was appropriate to give your intended’s father a tabua (whale’s tooth). If Clara had reacted badly to the chicken, it was probably best to ask the whale for a tooth, rather than implementing a considerably more drastic plan. He was sure that Clara would appreciate a few days of sun and sea, and find nothing untoward in him diving in the sea constantly. He was also entirely sure that he had told her about his respiratory bypass system. 

He spent sometime reassuring her that he hadn’t drowned.

Clara’s father thanked him politely for the tooth and took Clara to one side for a word. Something about, wasn’t the Swedish one bad enough?

The Doctor decided that carving a love spoon was an unmistakeable gesture of love, she would know that he would always feed and provide for her, there was no way she could misinterpret that, surely? He presented her with it one morning at breakfast. He added several extra spoonfuls of sugar to his tea, and stirred it and sipped it abstractedly. 

She had said it was lovely.

For the recipient to indicate that feelings were reciprocated they needed to wear it round their throat for several days.

The Doctor found himself attempting to peer down Clara’s top to see if the spoon was there. This lead to some very awkward explanations and one slap.

Clara had questioned him if he was feeling all right on a few occasions, to which he had replied he was feeling splendid. Clara wasn’t sure.

When he walked past her decorated as a bird-of-paradise, she had laughed until she cried, until she had to hold her sides and her face as they hurt so much for laughing. The Doctor huffed, and stayed in the library for three weeks.

He had proposed seven times.

He had held her hand.

He had kissed her forehead.

He had allowed himself to be hugged with minimum flailing on at least three recent occasions.

Didn’t Clara realise how hard it was for him? How overwhelming it was for him? What 900 years on your own did to a person?

He decided to read earth literature.

In between, he made cocoa for Clara every evening they spent on the TARDIS. She didn’t drink cocoa. He still made it for her, every night. Cocoa had been such an easy engagement, why was this so hard?

Jane Eyre – Mr Rochester had a wife he kept in the attic, no really, that wouldn’t do. And, he didn’t think of River in the library and sob.

Madame Bovary, oh now really, that wasn’t good. However, the father did anticipate the proposal and grant his approval. He did feel that referring to Clara as “the little one” could end quite badly, and probably in pain. Clara seemed to have fully embraced the Buddhist koan approach to learning, and was quite happy to slap him. Although it was him who was forced to say, shut up, shut up, shuttity up, on numerous occasions. He did wonder how her students coped.

Love in the time of Cholera – not exactly a catchy title and cholera didn’t seem awfully appealing, but an avowed classic. He did rather enjoy reading this one. The heroine agreed to marry the hero if he promised not to make her eat eggplant. Hmmm, how did Clara feel about aubergines? He made her moussaka without any obvious reaction. He knew how she felt about soufflés, she was explicit about soufflés, but really, how did she feel about Mediterranean vegetables? Aubergine soufflé was not a hit.

He felt a little more affinity for the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, even if he was a little hazy as to where Guernsey was. Ah, the hero was proposed to. He could cope with that. He was entirely opposed to spraining something, particularly if the something was his. He did review his memories to see if Clara might have proposed to him. 

Alas, no.

12, no, absolutely no significance in that number whatsoever.

He metaphorically dusted himself off and threw himself back into the fray. He ignored the TARDIS’ reaction to his mixed metaphors.

Pride and Prejudice was Clara’s favourite (well Marcus Aurelius had very little to say on romance). 

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”

Yes, well, thank you Marcus, he felt so much better. Interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will and selfishness – yes, so much better. He had been far more effective in the band. Fabulous bass guitarist.

Back to P&P (probably best not to call it that in front of Clara, she had been touchy enough when he had questioned her dates). It was 1796, not 1797. Really, called herself an English teacher? No, best not to remind her

He could take her to visit Jane, that might go well.

Hmmm, Mr Darcy really didn’t seem that much of a hero “his sense of her inferiority – of its being a degradation – of the family obstacles which judgement had always opposed to inclination.....” – not exactly a winning proposal. And, to be honest, anything that reminded Clara of her step-mother generally ended badly.

He watched John proposed to Aeryn in Farscape and found himself crying. He couldn’t speak when Clara had asked him what was wrong.

Star Wars! 

He thanked the TARDIS for not translating his profuse, extensive and heartfelt swears. 

“I love you.” “I know.” – where was the romance in that?

Did Clara know he loved her? Had he shown her? Had he told her by everything he did? Was it enough?

He could, he supposed, just say the words. Was that what humans wanted? It didn’t seem very romantic.

He found himself somewhat distracted by rule 34. Oh, gods, the tentacles, the tentacles. He deleted those memories and put a warning about ever approaching that topic, ever, again.

He sat on top of the TARDIS and meditated with Toby. He wasn’t convinced the cat belonged here, and may in fact have wandered in from someone else’s story. However, the purring was soothing. He did not tell Clara this. He told her, the cat must go.

He watched every episode of Sex in the City. He deleted those memories and put a warning about ever approaching that topic, ever, again.

“You had me at hello.” 

NO!

And he did seem awfully short.

He absolutely, positively refused to even consider anything remotely connected with Twilight. An old vampire and a young girl? He deleted those memories and put a warning about ever approaching that topic, ever, again.

He rather liked Johnny and June, but he realised that was a little specific. And how often were Clara and he likely to be singing “Jackson”?

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want that the rest of your life start as soon as possible!" that seemed reasonable. The rest of his life was a very long time, and Clara’s may be awfully short. The rest of forever would have to be long enough.

He wasted, not that he would admit it, several hours watching the Hunger Games and everything from studio Ghibili. He realised he identified strongly with Totoro. He wondered if he could take Clara to meet him, fictionality had not proved a problem so far. She wasn’t impressed with the resultant velvet worm in Vietnam. 

He sighed.

He had managed 4 marriages so far. More or less intentionally. He had children, he had grand children. How difficult could this be?

He threw Wuthering Heights against the wall. He was not Heathcliff and he found Cathy utterly capricious.

He picked the book up, apologised to it and put it back on the shelf.

He thought of Clara and Danny. He’d done everything to make their relationship, their future happen. He had gone to hell. He had given Danny a way back from death. Danny had given the prospect of happiness with Clara away. The Doctor didn’t think he could do that.

Was he a good man?

He opened and closed, The Time Traveller’s Wife. River had given it to him. He couldn’t read it.

Talking to Jack had not been helpful. He had given him ginger beer, which was entirely deleterious to a Time Lord’s physiology. To be honest, the Doctor didn’t remember much at all, but Jack seemed happy.

He could instantly dismiss Daleks and Cybermen as romantic role models. He considered every other species he had met. He thought of Brannigan and Valerie and their kittens. He smiled.

He read Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
Admit impediments. Love is not love  
Which alters when it alteration finds,  
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark  
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,  
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: 

If this be error and upon me proved,  
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

He left the poem on the TARDIS console.

He remembered his last visit to Will Shakespeare and decided it was too soon for another trip, maybe in another 2000 years.

He read Donne again 

“Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;  
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I  
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

“None can die”, if only that were true.

He ate two packets of biscuits.

Enough of poetry, it only made him sad. Toby sat on his knee.

He watched TV – starting with Game of Thrones may have been a mistake. He did like Arya Stark and Daenerys was impressive, but relationship advice – no.

Daphne and Niles in Frasier, that couple in Lost, ah, Morticia and Gomez, now there was a couple to admire.

He talked to Jenny and Vastra. He ignored Strax’s medical and weapons related advice, after a point, he wasn’t entirely sure which was which. He especially ignored Strax’s offer of ascertaining Clara’s fertility and suitability for child bearing.

That did give him pause though. Clara loved children. Clara worked with children. Clara would want children.

Could he, should he be a father again?

He thought of all those he had lost, his family, his friends, Gallifrey, everyone he had ever travelled with.

He didn’t do anything at all for sometime.

He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he didn’t tinker with anything, he wrote no formulae in chalk, he didn’t read, he didn’t travel.

Clara put food by him, drinks at his elbow, a blanket round his shoulders. She talked to him. She sat by him.

She put her arms around him. 

She gently stroked his hair.

She told him she loved him.

That was enough. That would have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> there is a velvet worm in Vietnam named after Totoro (its amazing what you learn writing fanfics)
> 
> Apologies if you don’t get all the tv/film/book references. - If you really want to know, I'll add them.
> 
> Oh, and this started as an OTP prompt about anniversaries, and I mused you have to get married first, so you have to have a proposal.....
> 
> And sorry, I really, really can't stand Wuthering Heights


End file.
